A K IS K K N T F.R TAINMKNT
sur i n AKt,
Playing Games—
Wiln a Difference
A new generation of entertainment software
You slowly awaken to find yourself
in a grimy toilet stall You have
no idea how you got there, or even
what your name i»-~all you know
is that your arm stings because
someone i who? you? who onr you?> drugged
you with a hypodermic But. more impor
tant. there's a dead guy upstairs bleeding
all over his desk, and if you don’t move
quickly—wait, there’s the wail of sirens—
you’ll be arrested for murder
It’s only a game, but whut a game Ray
mond Chandler himself might have ad
mired Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!
in which you must solve the murder to save
your skin. Deja Vu (SUndacape. Inc. 949.96)
is part of a new generation of entertain
ment software that combines running com
mentary with strikingly rich pictures—
from grisly murder scenes to airy man
sions—and vivid sound effects, like scream
ing sirens or the smack of fist against jaw
And. best of all, you don’t have to be a
computer wizard to play—operating these
games is so easy that the computer seems to
disappear. From the moment you load a
disc into the drive, the best of today ’a games
■re ready to do your bidding, whether
tapped on a keyboard or clicked with a
"mouse." That is, until you make a mistake
that ends your guming session with a sum
mary •“YOU HAVE DIED***.
Many believe that, as programming be
con i-s more sophisticated and prices drop,
sol' are will challenge VCR's for home
ent - rtain ment ti me." A VCR is a great one
medium," says Mindscape, Inc., presi
de n und CEO Roger Buoy. But many
p< pie want to participate, he adds. "They
di t want a one-way, kind of comatose way
ol eing entertuined or educated.”
ntertainment software began with ar
c r games like Pong, which captured a
g iTation of glussy-eyed gamesters. But as
! idless thrills wore thin, gamersdemand
1 more advanced fare to play on their own
uputera. They moved on to the broad
i<e of simulators—perhaps facing down
Soviet Union in Balance of Power, a
lomatic recreation that provides ency
1-edic profiles of 62 countries to help you
1 'kesuperpowered decisions.
•day's best games make the brain hurt,
creating problems that push you to the
edge of sanity before an epiphany occurs.
For most buyers, this means the ever-chal
lenging offerings from Infocom (among
them the Zork trilogy and A Mind Forever
Voyaging) Infocom specializes in "interac
tive fiction"—richly textured text games
that combine brainteasing and artful
prose Some interactive fiction drops you
into the plot: you can thumb a ride with a
game version of "The Hitchhiker s Guide
to the Galuxy,” beam into "Star Trek" (The
Kobayashi Alternative or enter Stephen
King's novella "The Mist."
Going beyond words, many adventures,
like Deja Vu, blend pictures with text. Win
ners in this group include Activision’s
Hacker (Activition, Inc. $30-$50>, which
puts the player in contact with an un
known computer a la the movie "War
Games." The time is now; the setting a
multinational's futuristic computer; the
player must figure out how to hack his way
in to save the world from Machiavellian
Silicon stoutMng: Two views of Deja Vu
captains of industry who seem willing to
wreck the planet in order to contol it.
Then there is Alter Ego (Activision, Inc.
$50-$60) which dares you to describe it. In
some ways it resembles fantasy role-play
ing games like Wizardry, in which the play
er constructs a character from a list of
attributes and then goes off to seek dun
geon-and-dragonish thrills. But in Alter
Ego that character in the making is plain
Microchip*. macro tun: Programs that please without being one way’or comatose’